Turn to Exodus chapter 10 in your own Bibles and read along. We're looking at the second and third of the last three plagues prior to the Passover.
Exodus chapter 10, beginning in verse 1. Then the Lord said to Moses, I have hardened his heart in the hearts of his officials so that I may perform these miraculous signs of mine among them, that you may tell your children and grandchildren how I dealt harshly with the Egyptians and how I performed my signs among them and that you may know that I am the Lord. So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said to him, this is what the Lord, the God of the Hebrews says, how long will you refuse to humble yourself before me? Let my people go so that they may worship me. If you refuse to let them go, I will bring locusts into your country tomorrow. They will cover the face of the ground so that it cannot be seen. They will devour what little you have left after the hail, including every tree that is growing in your field. They will fill your houses in those of all your officials and all the Egyptians. Something neither your fathers nor your forefathers have ever seen from the day they settled in this land till now. Then Moses turned and left Pharaoh. Pharaoh's official said to him, how long will this man be a snare to us? Let the people go so that they may worship the Lord their God. Do you not realize that Egypt is ruined? Then Moses and Aaron were brought back to Pharaoh. Worship the Lord your God, he said, but just two will be going. Moses answered, we will go with our young and old, our sons and daughters and with our flocks and herds because we are to celebrate a festival to the Lord. Pharaoh said, the Lord be with you, if I let you go along with your women and children, clearly you are bent on evil. No, have only to men go, and worship the Lord since that's what you have been asking for. Then Moses and Aaron were driven out of Pharaoh's presence. And the Lord said to Moses, stretch out your hand over Egypt so that the locusts will swarm over the land and devour everything growing in the fields, everything left by the hail. So Moses stretched his staff over Egypt and the Lord made an east wind blow across the land all that day and all that night by morning the wind had brought the locusts. They invaded all Egypt and settled down in every area of the country in great numbers. Never before had there been such a flag of locusts, nor will there ever be again. They covered all the ground until it was black. They devoured all that was left after the hail, everything growing in the fields and the fruit on the trees. Nothing green remained on tree or plant in all the land of Egypt. Pharaoh quickly summoned Moses and Aaron and said, I have sinned against the Lord your God and against you. Now forgive my sin once more and pray to the Lord your God to take this deadly flag away from me. Moses and left Pharaoh and prayed to the Lord, and the Lord changed the wind to a very strong west wind, which caught up the locusts and carried them into the red sea. Not a locust was left anywhere in Egypt, but the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he would not let the Israelites go. Then the Lord said to Moses, stretch out your hand toward the sky so that darkness will spread over Egypt. Darkness that can be felt. So Moses stretched out his hand toward the sky and total darkness covered all Egypt for three days. No one could see anyone else or leave his place for three days. Yet all the Israelites had light in the places where they lived. Then Pharaoh summoned Moses and said, go, worship the Lord, even your women and children may go with you, only leave your flocks and herds behind. But Moses said you must allow us to have sacrifices and burn offerings to present to the Lord our God. Our livestock too must go with us. Not a hoof is to be left behind. We have to use some of them in worshiping the Lord our God, and until we get there, we will not know what we are to use to worship the Lord. But the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he was not willing to let them go. Pharaoh said to Moses, get out of my sight. Make sure you do not appear before me again. Today you see my face. You will die. Just as you say Moses replied, I will never appear before you again. Humans are reading, let us give thanks to the Lord. You have a response of thankfulness in your bulletins. The word of the Lord, let us pray. Our God and our Father, we are thankful to you for this your word, and ask that Jesus you would preach to us by it, by your spirit, that you would illumine this word to grant us understanding and change us. Help us to see you more clearly. Help us to see what you want us to do more clearly. Help us to see your love for us more clearly. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. There are many examples in our society of incomparability, things that are incomparable.
We can think in our own history in the United States of George Washington. Is anybody ever really going to compare any other president to him? He was the first one. He led the troops in the American Revolutionary War. He got our country on a good track. I took a course on the American Revolution in college. I remember the professor I had in one of the chief American historians for the last 50 years from Columbia. He studied under the sky. He was a real cynic, a professor of mine. When he came to George Washington, he said there is no doubt that this country would have fallen apart, that the Constitution would have never have come to be if every member of the assembly in the Constitutional Convention did not know without a doubt that George Washington would be elected as the first president of the United States. Completely shocked me this cynic, saying this statement about George Washington. How incomparable he is. Compared to any other president that we've ever had, maybe you'd think of an Abraham Lincoln or an FDR, a guy had four terms as president, certainly having an effect on our country, maybe you'd think in terms of incomparability of somebody like Harriet Tubman or a Helen Keller, people who did great things that almost really can't be repeated. This passage this morning is about God, our God, being incomparable. It's about the incomparability of God. We see that in many ways in this passage in these two plagues, and as we go forward here, if you'd like to fill out your outline that's in your bulletin, you're welcome to do that, you don't have to, but here's what God says just first of all. He says Jesus is incomparable in power. Jesus is incomparable in power, so don't fear death. Jesus is incomparable in power, so don't fear death. Many times power is a source of threat. It certainly was for Pharaoh. He saw the power of God in his day, and it was always for him a source of threat, him losing his slave force, or him having his land ravaged in some way, or another. In our days power can be a threat, when we look at guides like Hitler, or maybe just some guy in a dark alley who has a gun. Power can be a threat to us. I watched this movie for this week, for the first time the movie Crimson Tide, as Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman it's about an American nuclear sub, and this sub is given instructions to launch its nuclear missiles at a particular place in Russia, and they've gotten these instructions, and then another message starts coming through, and they're attacked by a Russian sub, and a message doesn't finish, and so they don't know if this second message is to not launch the nuclear missiles or to go ahead with the launch. And so that's what the whole movie is kind of about, and deciding what to do. It was an especially sticky situation because this was not an ordinary sub, it was a nuclear sub, and the launching of these types of missiles could end up in nuclear holocaust, and so you have members of the crew and even disagreement between the commanding officer, Gene Hackman, and the executive officer, Denzel Washington, as to how they should proceed with this half-written message. Should we proceed with our orders previous, or should we assume that we need to hear more before we do something else? They had great power, great power to destroy, and the power that was a threat, power that could cause massive death on the earth. In this passage, God's power meant death to crops, certainly, death to the sun's effect. Eventually, God's power would mean death to Pharaoh's firstborn son, and the firstborn sons of all of Egypt, but we see here God's power in this passage is shown to us to be incomparable. This is a big point, God wants us to see in this passage. Look at verse 6 in your Bibles, if you still have them open, and if you don't, you can open up again. Next to this 10-6, Moses says, they will fill the locus, they will fill your houses, and those of you all in your officials and all the Egyptians, something neither your fathers, nor your forefathers have ever seen from the day they settled in this land till now. God is going to do something that's incomparable. You've never seen anything like it, you'll never see anything like it again. Verse 14, Egypt's gods were supposed to protect Egypt's people from things like locus, and God knocks out these gods, so to speak, these false gods, but then he does something funny in verse 14. One of Egypt's main gods, one of their main three gods was the God raw, and it was believed that it came to be it, it believed in Egypt that Pharaoh himself was the earthly manifestation of raw, the sun god, and so what does God do to show that his power cannot be compared to any other god? Darkness, complete darkness, for three days, darkness of the type that give me felt, darkness of the type where people couldn't see the person next to them. Verse 14, they invaded all Egypt, all these locus settled down, then on down the passage about the sun, people could not see each other. Raw does not compare to the Lord. We've talked about the Lord before, Capitol L-O-R-D, it's the Hebrew verb used in the causative tense, meaning I cause to be. The one who causes to be, that's what that means, this is a verb here, Yahweh. God continues to show through these plagues that he is the one who causes to be, he's the one who causes the locus to be. He's the one who causes the sun to be, and the sun beats overing ocean, over his own people, but God has it stopped, and cease to be for the Egyptians. God is in control. God is all powerful, and his powerful cannot be compared to anyone else's power. Nemozes had the people under him. God's people were under him, and they got out of Egypt, and Nemozes wrote this book recounting all the things that God did for them while they were in Egypt. God's people had in front of them a task, when they got out of Egypt, and that task was to go into Canaan and take the land that was promised the Abraham, their forefather, but there were people in Canaan, people with fortified cities, people with armies that would fight against them, and there was the temptation for them to fear what was in front of them, and to fear for their very own lives as they entered into Canaan and tried to take it over, because maybe they would be killed in battle. Nemozes writes this passage to these people to remind them that God, the Lord, causes to be what he causes to be. The Lord causes to be his heavenly troops that fight for his people, that bring in locusts, that take them away, that cause the light from the sun to shine and to not shine. God would accomplish whatever it was he needed to accomplish for the sake of his people. He would fight for his people and they had no reason to fear death by entering Canaan. God would fight those battles for them in Canaan as they took the promised land just like he had done in Egypt. How does this speak to us today? Well, first of all, it speaks of our head, our leader, our king, Jesus. God's power worked mildly in Jesus and his life on earth, but also in Jesus' death. God's power, here's your plan. God's power overcame death. God's power overcame death in the case of Jesus. And when Jesus overcame death, it did something for us. You see, when Jesus overcame death, he stole the keys and the power of death from Satan. And when he did this, what it means for us is that we who are in Christ, that's your blank we, who are in Christ, overcome death as well. By Christ's spirit, we are resurrected to eternal life or to put it in terms of the Exodus. God defeats not the Egyptians and the Canaanites and their gods to bring us into the promised land. God defeats Satan himself to bring us into the promised land of heaven. That's your blank there. Promise I didn't give you much room because I didn't want to make going the next line. But the promised land. God defeats Satan himself. His power overcomes death. He overwhelms Satan who had the power of death and what this means for us who are in Jesus is that we do not die a second death. He brings us into the promised land of heaven. We are these Israelites in the wilderness of this life. And we've got Canaan, the promised land before us. Heaven, the new heavens and the newer and we could fear over death, couldn't we? Everybody else does. We could look into Canaan so to speak. We could look at death and say, oh, scary stuff. But we don't need to fear death because Christ our conqueror has gone before us and overcome death and we are in Him. So the power of God, the incomparable power of God, means to us to you that you need not fear death. Secondly, in this passage, God says to us this morning, Jesus is incomparable in power. Therefore conquer. Therefore conquer sins mastery by God's spirit in your life. Jesus is incomparable in power. Therefore conquer sins mastery by God's spirit in your life. God's people under Moses were in slavery to Pharaoh. Pharaoh was their master, but that changes, doesn't it? It changes with their Exodus, which we'll soon see in the coming weeks. It changes with their Exodus from Egypt through the waters of the Red Sea. God's people go out after the tenth plague across the Red Sea and they are free. No longer slaves. Any hope of Pharaoh ever taking them back has been crushed in the Red Sea because Pharaoh's army was crushed in the Red Sea. Drowned in the Red Sea. So there are no longer slaves. What does the New Testament say about this crossing through the Red Sea out of slavery? 1 Corinthians 10, 1 and 2. Paul writes, I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact brothers, you and the church, that our forefathers, those who were under Moses, were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea, the Red Sea. They were all, what's Paul saying? They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. That was a shadow of what is true for us today. Paul is saying this great act of God bringing his people out of slavery through water was a foreshadowing of something that occurs in the church today. How does this speak to us? What occurs in the church today that is like this? Well, to take us back, first of all, to speak again of our king and head, Jesus. God's power worked mightily in Jesus and his life on earth. God overcame God's power overcame temptation. That's your blank. God's power overcame temptation and sin in the case of Jesus. Jesus was sinless. Jesus was a man and he faced temptation, but he did not sin. The power of God, the spirit of God overcame that. Jesus conquered all temptations to sin, put to him, all through his life. And he conquered sin itself as we read this morning in Romans 6. And with Jesus overcoming of sin, we who are in Christ can by the spirit of Christ overcome sin too. That's your blank. We who are in Christ have the spirit of Christ can overcome sin too. By the spirit we are given spiritual life and by the spiritual life in the spirit of Christ we overcome sin's mastery. Notice Paul's use of terms here in Romans 6. He ties it to Egypt, doesn't he? He talks about sin as a master over us, just like Pharaoh was a master of God's people in Egypt. He talks about freedom from this mastery by the spirit. Just like God's people were free from the mastery of Pharaoh. By God's spirit, the cloud, that was before them, a manifestation of the spirit. To put this in terms of the Exodus, God freezes not from the slavery of Egypt and fares mastery over us by bringing us out through the water of the Red Sea. Rather, today in the church, here's how that works. God freezes from the slavery of sin and Satan's mastery over us by bringing us through the waters of baptism. And that's your blank. By bringing us through the waters of baptism. Now there's one baptism, but there are two baptisms. There's one baptism of the Holy Spirit. 1 Corinthians 12, 13, Paul tells us that every believer is baptized in the spirit. Because all of us have been baptized in the spirit. That's what happened. God's spirit came upon you, gave you spiritual life, you saw the gospel and believed. That's spirit baptism. It occurs that you're spiritual birth. But then we come, and if we've been outside the church and grow up in the church, then we come and we're baptized with water. And that represents what happened spiritually to us. That God's spirit came over us, and that we were cleansed from our sins. Or if we grew up in the church and were baptized as an infant, that symbolism as an infant comes into effect and reality. So when God's spirit baptized you and came to faith, as your water baptism signified, whether it was before or after your point of faith, here's what this means. You came out of Egypt. You came out of slavery with your baptism. That's your blank. You came out of your slavery to sin. And you came out of your slavery to sin, just as truly as God's people came out of their slavery in Egypt. They weren't in Egypt anymore. They had crossed the Red Sea. They had passed through their baptism in the Red Sea. And we in the church passed through a baptism. That's what's required of church membership. When you become a member of the church, you're baptized. It's all together. Baptism and church membership. God is incomparable in this, and what he does in his conquering of sin's mastery. You know, no other God and no other religion that we can go to today offers freedom from the mastery of sin. Most religions in fact don't even deal with the problem or the issue of sin. They avoid it. They side-step it. Because maybe they don't have a solution for it. That's true. They don't have a God who has grace and forgiveness through the justice carried out on Jesus. So most religions lessen sin. Say, we're not that bad. And then what they do is they lessen the holiness of God and say, well, he doesn't require perfection. And so instead of a God he's very holy and us who are very sinful, bridged completely by Jesus. That's Christianity. We've got, in other religions, a less holy God who accepts less than holy people and people who think they're better. Then they actually are. People who aren't owning up to their own sin, their own moral shortcomings. God's most religions that today don't offer freedom from the mastery of sin. They may promise greater peace through some man-centered rituals or practices. Buddhist Nirvana, for instance. It's how to have peace in the midst of a sinful world. How to have peace in the midst of your own sin. Christianity, however, deals with its adherence, having resources for their mastery over sin and living God who lives in them and conquers sin. There are no big elephants in the living room in Christianity. Christianity, the God we serve, is incomparable. He says, you know, sin is bad. It's awful. It deserves hell for eternity. But I cover it. I cast all that sin, all my people, on my son. And sin is taken care of. I'm still as holy as ever. You're still sinful as ever. But I have bridged that difference through my son. This is a real religion, Christianity. With real power and a real God. It's not a philosophy or state of mind. It's not, oh believe in something and it's good for you. It's not, most people who are religious are more happy. It's not people who pray, live longer, and have lower stress levels. That stuff can be true, statistically. That's not what Christianity is about. Christianity isn't about surviving the effects of sin. It's about getting rid of it. It's not about playing mind tricks on ourselves. When I was an athlete, I used to play... When I used to be an athlete, I used to play mind tricks. And when I'd be running in it would hurt. I would pretend like it didn't hurt. Mind trick. Or when I was running in it would hurt. I would pretend that I was running in the Olympics. And I only had 50 more yards to go. And so I'd actually speed up through my pain. All kinds of mind tricks to get myself through it. Or if you have had kids and are familiar with Lamas, what is that? It's mind tricks to get you through. The incredible pain that you're actually experiencing. All this mind piece can happen apart from the existence of any real power or any real God. I can run faster for 50 yards in the midst of great pain. And I'm not really in the Olympics. It was just a mind trick. It worked. It put me at peace and put my body able to go faster. But it wasn't real power. Peace experienced by us is a piece that's real. It's a piece because Jesus has done something about our circumstances. It's a piece that's brought about by his power. All other religions have no real power because their gods don't exist. It's all philosophy ultimately. It's all a way of thinking. It's all a way of dealing with life. It's not religions that address them. They don't apply concrete divine power to solve the problem. Put it this way. Suppose in your driveway at home, or if you live in apartments, you've got at your entryway, a 25 foot wide, 10 foot high pile of dirt. Your driveway, say what? It's 12, 15 feet across something like that. It's 25 feet across a dirt. It goes 10 feet high all the way across. Okay, I got the picture. Other religions teach the pile is okay. Other gods say the pile is okay and they teach you ways to get around it. You know you can cut through your yard over here or just wait until your neighbor's gone already. You can cut through his yard and those kind of things. How you can live with this great big inconvenient pile that's in your driveway. But other religions do not compare with our God. Christianity is a religion that doesn't talk you how to get around this pile, how to deal with it, how to be a piece with the pile. It removes it. It gets the pile all the way so you can use your driveway. So you can function properly. That's what Christianity is. That's what our God is. That's what our God does. That pile of dirt is your sin. Other religions help you pretend it's not there. Convince you it's not that bad. Teach you how to live with it. But Christianity says the pile is there. Your sin is there and it's in the way of your life. It's in the way of a better life for you and it stinks that it's there. Christianity by the Spirit of God holds the pile away. We empowered by God's Spirit to attack the pile of sin in our lives to remove it, get it off our driveway so to speak so you can use your driveway and just drive in and drive out straight. We work with real, that's your blank. We work with real divine power to get rid of the sin in our lives. No mind tricks, no philosophies, no ways of thinking about it. Real divine power at work, just like it was at work in Egypt. Bringing locusts causing the sun not to shine. The power of God, the incomparable power of God means to us to you that you can conquer your slavery to sin. You can conquer Satan's mastery over you anytime you believe and trust God's word in the midst of your temptation. All believers have the Spirit of Christ. If we believe God's word to be true, we conquer sin. It's a mean we'll be perfect. No, we'll fall. We'll fall. Does it mean no temptation is overtaken as such that it's common, but such as common a man? And he is faithful and will provide a way of escape also that we may be able to endure it? Yes. There is no, that's what Scripture tells us. There is no temptation that is too strong for you because you have the Spirit of Christ. The Spirit that led the people through the Red Sea, the Spirit that brought the locusts, the Spirit that brought the darkness. You have real divine power working at removing the pile of sin in your life. Will you be sinless this side of glory? No. Do you have the ability from God? Power from God not to sin? Absolutely. You have God's Spirit, the incomparable power of God's Spirit, that's your blank Spirit. That crushes all other gods and overcomes all that is set before it, even your temptations. In Egypt we see that God is incomparable. There are no gods that can stand up to Him and today we say there are no temptations that can stand up to Him either and He is in our lives. Jesus is incomparable and power therefore hope for all things at the second coming. Jesus is incomparable and power therefore hope for all things at the second coming. Notice how Pharaoh tries to negotiate with God in both of these flags. You see that? He tries to negotiate with what God is going to do and who is going to be able to come out and who is not? Pharaoh said, the Lord be with you, if I let you go along with your women and children clearly you have been on evil, verse 11, no, have only to men go. He is negotiating with God and worship the Lord since that is what you have been asking for. Verse 24, Pharaoh summoned Moses and said, go, worship the Lord, even your women and children may go with you. This is after the darkness. Only leave your flocks and herds behind. Pharaoh is negotiating with God, isn't he? Well, you can do this. I get this. But what does God do? Does He back down and not give us people all things? Does He enter into negotiations with Pharaoh and says, well, okay, that's pretty good. It's not everything I promised. Not everything I came to do, but it's pretty good. Okay, Pharaoh, you got to deal. No, God doesn't negotiate and that's good news. God doesn't negotiate and that's good news. That's a blank too. Why doesn't God negotiate? Well, he doesn't have to. Why doesn't he have to? Because his power is incomparable. God is in the power position here. God is always in the power position and he doesn't have to negotiate with anybody and he never does. No one is like the Lord. Terminator 3 is coming out in July. I think I'll go see it. It's got Arnold Schwarzenegger in there, of course. Those of you who are younger who may not know, Arnold Schwarzenegger got his fame from winning most bodybuilding competitions during the 1970s. Mr. Olympia, Mr. Universe, Mr. World, all those competitions. That's what he did before he was ever in any film. Well, suppose I were back in the 70s and it was the morning of the Mr. Universe competition and I went up to Arnold and I said, Arnold, if you give me a million dollars, I'll let you win this thing. Thank you. Go for it. Thank you. Did you enter into negotiations with me? No. He's in the power position and I see you smiling. You're insulting my physique. I'll go on. It wouldn't work. To negotiate you must do so from a position of power or else you don't have any leverage. You don't win anything in the negotiations. This passage tells us something. It tells us there's no one. No God, no thing, no system. It has anything on God. God does not need to negotiate with anybody or anything. No one has any power over our God and God doesn't negotiate. God takes it all. He keeps the million dollars and wins the competition. How about that? God does whatever he wants. What does this mean for Moses and the people? Well, contrary to Pharaoh's request, God's people leave Egypt, all of them, not just the men, with all their flocks and herds, contrary to Pharaoh's stated desire here. And then they even walk away and we'll see it in the next couple of weeks. They walk away with the riches of Egypt. Egyptian people give silver and gold and cattle and livestock to God's people as they exit the land after the Passover. God gives his people all things. We read that in Romans 8, 32 or whatever it was this morning, or to read it for us. God gives his people all things. They get it all. God didn't negotiate and give us people less. He gave it to them all. Everything they needed, they plundered the Egyptians. That's where we get the expression. What does this speak to us today? This passage tells us that our Christianity is too small. Our Christianity, what we think Christianity about is way too small. We only worry about us personally getting forgiven of our sins and getting to heaven. That's all we want and that's all we think Christianity is promising. And we in our minds have negotiated away all that God will give us. God doesn't say this is all we get. Forgiveness of sins. Doesn't say this is always going to give us, but this is all Jesus came to accomplish the forgiveness of sins. Don't give me wrong. Forgiveness of sins and getting to heaven is fantastic. And if that's all it were, I say great, but that's not what God says. God says I freely gave you Jesus. Doesn't say I will freely forgive your sins. He says I will freely give you all things. If we walk away thinking that Christianity is just about the forgiveness of sins, we've walked off without our wives and our flocks and herds. We've negotiated the promises that God gives to us in Jesus. Here it is Romans 8.32. He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also along with him graciously give us all that's your blank all things. You know Hinduism promises that we get to come back and live this life over and I say no thanks. You guys are great. I love my house. I like to golf but no thanks. I don't want to come back. Not even as Jamie nut. And not as a toad. Not as a frog. Buddhism promises me a state of nothingness. You see how the promises of other religions don't compare to the promises of our God. Christianity promises new heavens, new earth, perfect sinless society of joy and love and the care of our perfect God. This is the promise of Christianity. God cares for us. It promises us a kingdom in which we will be satisfied by God. Our souls will really be satisfied. Jesus speaks of fully establishing a perfect kingdom. That's your blank perfect. This is the promise of Christianity. This is the all things. Perfection of perfect kingdom when all things are made right and Jesus will do it in full. No impartial fulfillment through negotiation. No negotiation just powerful fulfillment. Jesus is coming and he's going to clean house. This is the kingdom for which we hope. At the second coming Jesus will rise and crush all the gods. The false beliefs, the false ways, unbelieving kings and governments etc. And God will punish just injustice when Jesus comes. Jesus will overcome all power structures and all godlessness that's your blank. All godlessness. He won't negotiate. He won't leave some behind. He will accomplish everything. All things will be taken care of and given to us. Now what's the timing of this? Well the timing of this is that it's at the second coming. It's at a future time. That's your blank. It's at a future time. This establishment of a perfect kingdom is not on the agenda for now. We could guess that by the fact that we're 2000 years after Jesus and he still hasn't done it. It's a good guess to say at that point while he's probably not trying to establish a perfect kingdom right now in this age. We had an indication of it. I mentioned this last week in Acts 24 and 26. When Paul goes before the governing authorities has a chance to get them to conform society to a more perfect kingdom. Hey you know Agrippa, why don't you get those temple prostitutes out of Corinth? Open prostitution and fornication. Why don't you get that out? It doesn't talk about that. It talks about the resurrection of Jesus. That gives us a hint that what has got about? Well he's about the great commission. He's about the message of the gospel that Jesus overcame death by his power. That he brings us out of slavery to sin by his power. And that someday when he returns he will give us all things by his power. What God is doing today is he is expanding his spiritual. That's your blank. He's expanding his spiritual kingdom through the great commission. When Jesus returns, he'll not have negotiated with Satan or the governments of this world as we often try to do as American Christians. But he will give us all things and he will give all those who belong to his spiritual kingdom. All things. This is why when Jesus gave the church its marching orders before returning to his father, he told us not to transform society. You find this all over stuff. PCA's guilty of this is anybody. I've got a bookmark right now from M&A the division of the PCA that plants churches and we're beneficiaries of them but they've got this bookmark out now. He's transforming our culture in one church at a time or something like that and misses the point. Jesus didn't give the great commission to transform our culture. He said build my kingdom. He said go make disciples of all nations. He didn't say turn the nations into my disciples. We're not out to transform culture.